One-third of us making illegal copies of DVDs

Number is up from 2007

NEWS: 10 July 2008 17:51 GMT by Katie Scott

There are warnings galore and the government, and film industry, are trying to crackdown on it, but it seems that more and more of us are making illegal copies of DVDs.

According to a new survey by analyst firm Futuresource Consulting, 38% of UK users and 32% of US users have copied a DVD disc within the past 6 months.

The research took in 5331 people, and concluded that illegal DVD copying is on the rise.

Last year, only a quarter of those quizzed admitting to copying a DVD.

Of the respondents who admitted to copying DVDs, 63% in the UK and 77% in the US said that they would have otherwise purchased the copied material.

"As studio revenues from DVD are in decline, protecting revenues is even more vital than 12 months ago", said the report.

"The vast majority of these copiers admit that they would purchase at least some of the titles on DVD if they had not been able to copy them, clearly indicating the significant levels of lost revenue due to home copying."

The survey pointed to 18-24-year-old males as the most likely culprits, and movies are the most copied material, followed by TV shows and then, surprise surprise, "special interest" titles (in other words, porn).

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Have Your Say

Well stop RIPPING us off with high priced DVDs and CDs, no one would copy if they were priced at a reasonable level.

Greed, Greed, Greed.

They could be priced at about £5 and still great profits would be made.

Nemo
Jon Nemo, UK
it costs nearly nothing to press a disc and all this about lost revenues the companies make lots of money the disks are probly pressed in china where some child gets paid a penny a day to watch a machiene. the multimillionaires of actors dont need any more money and neither do the big companies selling this stuff. if somebody wants to buy a dvd they will if they dont then they wont. you cant change this
danny, uk
Most disks in this country get pressed by by a factory in Wales. But that doesn't really change your point; If they can afford to sell some for £5 or less they can afford to sell them al at that price. I'm no sure I believe the 77% would have bought it if they hadn't copied it. If you like it enough to do more than rent it or watch a copy a couple of times before deleting it, then in my experience people do buy the better quality disc with the extras and nice box etc...
Dan, United Kingdom
Cost of DVD - at least £15, cost of cinema seats £7 or so. Cost of providing cinema seats (including rates, staff, etc, etc) probably about £5, cost of DVD about 50p. Number of cinemas in remote & rural districts in the UK - falling rapdily if not already nil. I enjoy seeing a film in a cinema (apart from the hooligans there), but prefer to sit in my home, with my comforts around me in peace & quiet. I rarely watch a DVD twice, so how can I justify paying the amount demanded for the DVD?
Hoyus, UK
The ignorance about the make-up of the cost of DVD's astounding. There is far more to this than just pressing a DVD and putting it in a box. I work for a big wholesaler/distributor and we have to buy the DVD's, store them, ship them and deal with all the returns of unsold product. Then we have to sell them to retailers who also have all their costs. If you reduced the price to £5 then 1000's of people would lose jobs. People in this country are so small minded and selfish. These sort of arguments have raged for years about all sorts of products e.g. food and the promoters of cheap, at all costs, are obviously not the ones whose jobs will be at stake. Just ask yourself - whatever industry you work in, what would happen to your job if someone forced your Company to reduce the prices by two thirds because people could obtain the product from another source illegally!
Pistol, U.K.
i understand people would loose their jobs but its clear to everyone that people find it too easy to copy a disk so instead of paying the £12 to buy it they either pay the £4 to rent it and copy it. job cuts and price cutting may be the only way. i would be willing to pay £5 for an older release and £8 for a newer one i mean come on does it cost much more to press and ship a new release then sell it for £15 than it does for an older one then sell it for £8. our country just seems to be getting ripped off everywhere.
ian, uk
Pistol, if this is the case, then how can stores and internet sites such as Amazon justify selling them for less than half the price a year after there release? Chart dvd's currently cost around £15.00, leave it 6 months to a year and you can pick it up for around £5.00, even the special edition ones! I work for an internet retail company so I know about the cost of buying and shipping etc, and I also know how much profit is made on certain goods. You cannot deny that a profit can still be made on DVD's which only cost £5.00! If you lower the price more people will buy them thus the profits will be the same.

This country has to be selfish as we are constantly ripped off, I'm pretty sure Americans don't pay $30.00 for a new DVD!
Sam, UK
To go and see a film at the cinema cost me £20 for family having paid that out to the film industry to see a title i doubt i am alone in not wishing to pay twice if i want to watch it again. if prices were £5-£8 I wouldn't dream of copying a title.
John Krieg, UK
Pistol... I also worked in the distribution industry for a fair while and the process of storing, distributing and returning of goods is part of all products, from cheap pencils to expensive electronics. Perhaps if the price was lower for a DVD, more would be sold and you'd be distributing more thereby offsetting the losses you'd make for handling fewer. It's not exactly complicated economics, simple supply and demand stuff. Of course we could look at buying them cheaper online, in a format that can be burnt to CD cutting out distributors altogether, surely that would put more than just thousands out of business, assuming the distribution of DVDs was their only business, which is rarely the case.
Let's consider this question: would those same people who copy stuff, go out and buy it if it wasn't available to copy...?
David, UK
Music and Film companies will always find ways or recouping money, at the moment it seems to be charging people through the nose for cinema and gig tickets.

Free Music and Film, companies make enough through advertisements and merchandising anyway.
Lee, UK
According to this report, 77% would buy if they coudn't copy.

The DVD's at the higher price (and margin) support those when they come down to the lower price. Believe me, the margins at the lower price would not support the industry that exists around ensuring that there is enough product for everyone who wants it in the first days of release - and that is what people want. As has been stated, you will get it chepaer if you wait - so wait and get it cheaper. For the record, we supply the on-line retailers too and their lower prices exists because they don't have the same costs. But if you want no shops to browse in etc. then that's what you will have.
Ultimately, we all pay a price for demanding cheap product e.g. crap service from helpdesks in Asia, chickens that are tasteless from supermarkets, retailers going out of Business. It's not all about mega profits being made and it's not about a few film stars making millions
Pistol, U.K.
Pistol, thats crap! the reason we have useless help desks in Asia, and Tasteless chickens in supermarkets is so the companies can make the money! Cheap labour in asia = more profit, cheap battery chickens from farmers = more profit. As someone who works in distribution surely u should know this? Isn't it common knowledge that companies exploit such things to make as much money as possible?

David is right, lower prices, more sales, same profits, and thats exactly how amazon do it! They cut our company on alot of prices on products, buy doing that they sell more and make the same amount as profit as we do by selling half as many. Simple Economics.

Big companies buy goods from manufacturers for as cheap as possible and then mark them up by about 300% to make an extorsionate profit on something that probably cost less than £1.00 to make.

Just for the record, new DVD's in the USA are around $15.99, the equivalent of £8.00.....
Sam, UK
All companies, regardless of industry, set the price to get the maximum sales value.
When CD's dropped in price a few years ago, by up to 50%, did sales double - no, of course not (and that was before downloads). The U.K. is a limited market. This is not the case in the U.S. which has a far bigger market.
If you are going to use 'simple economics' then please ensure that you can understand them fully first!
Pistol, U.K.
I don't believe that it's my understanding of economics in question here.

What you are basically saying is that we should pay more for DVD's and CD's because we have a smaller population than the USA? Do you honestly believe that?

The drop in CD prices a few years ago didn’t help them to fly off the shelves because the English consumer had wised up to the fact that £9.00 for a CD you have never heard before, featuring a meagre 9 tracks is still ridiculous. I'm sure the success of Radiohead’s last album Rainbows can support that statement.

Unfortunately we live in a country that proves to be one of the most expensive places to live in the world, so any form of entertainment which can be obtained free whether that’s films, or music, will never be snubbed. If the big corporate companies would like to put a stop to that there is really only one solution, because eventually if illegal copies continue at this rate they will be making even less money.

Perhaps it's time they cut their losses.
Sam, UK
i havnt copied a dvd for a while now due to buggered burners but i still download from p2p sites and i will not buy dvd untill they are fairly priced and people like the bpi start to consider not being such money grabbing little oiks our isp has just started talk with the bpi over people using p2p and torrent networks to download music and films and i for one think it is pathetic of the isp to join forces with a bunch of money grabbing people the isp can never be prosecuted for the stuff people download due to the fact the files/films/music is never stored on there servers yet there joining forces with them
andy, UK
What a lot of excuses for what is basically stealing. The only person here making any sense is Pistol. Andy, et al, you have no intention of paying for something you think is okay to get for free. I doubt you would pay for it even if it were sold at a much lower price.

Let me see you use the same arguments if you get caught shoplifting. I bet then your "As soon as Dixons make it cheaper I'll buy lots of gear but in the meantime I'll just help myself" will not go down well with the magistrates. Or your employer and family come to that.

Grow up!
mark, UK
I've not got round to ripping films as yet but I can see the attraction for people on low incomes and a government that is RIPPING them off.Try telling Brown and his buddies that TAX of 85% of the cost of a litre of petrol isn't THEFT!
Spielberg and co, Bill Gates etc, all BILLIONAIRES not to mention ANY top actor all earning MILLIONS per film.
Keep on ripping folks I think I might join you!
jimbo, U.K.